Nike's self-lacing HyperAdapt 1.0 will be widely available sooner than you think
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Cristiano Ronaldo, Serena Williams, Kyrie Irving and Odell Beckham Jr. are among the athletes who have already gotten a chance to wear the much-anticipated self-lacing Nike HyperAdapt 1.o. That’s the shoe that drew inspiration from Back To The Future and is touted as “the future of footwear.”
“It’s almost like they can’t believe it,” Nike senior innovator Tiffany Beers said Thursday on the Engadget CES Stage. “The [athletes] I’ve gotten to deliver to, they’re like, ‘Oh, it really works?’
“And so they’re just kind of mesmerized about it. And you can see them start to think like, ‘Oh, if this adapted on the fly. . . .’ Basketball players have their shoes tight the whole basketball game, and they’re super tight. They can start understanding how it can loosen and change throughout the game. One of the early athletes was [Chicago Sky wing] Elena Delle Donne, and she got it instantly.”
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Athletes who have tested the shoes on a daily basis and have found that the battery can last more than six weeks without recharging, according to Beers.
It’s an achievement to have had the shoe launch to consumers. Consequently, the HyperAdapt 1.0 isn’t an easy purchase to make. A pair retails at a whopping $720, and appointments to try on and purchase the shoe at select locations in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago filled up quickly.
But the average person will eventually be able to walk into a Nike store and buy a pair. “Sooner than they think,” Beers said.
That’s because the demand is there. Nike told Business Insiderit has seen an “extremely strong response” from customers interested in the shoes. Beers added there the HyperAdapt 2.0 and HyperAdapt 3.0 are already in the works.
“We had a great conversion rate,” Beers said of the HyperAdapt 1.0. “Everyone who got the appointments . . . most or all of them bought them, so they were very happy with the product.”
Also, the price is expected to drop.
“That shoe I think it’s very difficult to make, and it takes a lot of effort,” Nike shoe designer Tinker Hatfield said at CES. “I think it’s very analogous to the way computers have evolved. We’re going to see improvements in the way these shoes are made and the way they’re designed so that they can be manufactured more easily, and of course as we start to order more and more from the factories, the price will come down. Just like in any innovation, it’s a little expensive up front because the economy of scale is not quite in our favor.”
